Behavior- Not Just for Two-Year-Olds

Right now I am sitting at Gate A19 in the Dallas/Ft Worth airport, and taking a few moments to reflect both on the past few days and the past couple of hours. Let me start with the last few days. I was in the DC area to present a general session at a conference of almost 200 child and youth development professionals. The topic was “Exploring Challenging Behavior”. I spent two-hours explaining that “behavior is communication.” We are all communicating through our behavior all the time, I told the group. I used the example that as my audience, I was reading their behavior during the presentation. Droopy eyes? I surmise they are sleepy and introduce something energizing to wake them up. It’s the same with children. When they behave they are communicating their wants and needs to us. The difference, I explain to the group, is that as adults we have cultivated some coping skills so that we can deal with life’s challenges. Children may not yet have the ability to say “I’m feeling frustrated” and so they show you in any number of ways, some of which can be very unappealing.

So, my speaking engagement went well, and I am up early on Sunday to catch my flight home. The originating flight leaves 40 minutes late, which I know will make it very likely that I will miss my connecting flight. We are not given any information about why we were delayed in the first place, or what will happen when we arrive in Dallas. I overhear conversations like “I heard there are no more flights to California today” and I start to feel my stress level increasing. My connecting flight is scheduled for 12:30pm and the plane hits the ground at 11:55am. I’ll make it! Then, we spend 10 minutes taxing into the gate and another 5 minutes waiting for the runway staff to clear some structure from in front of the gate. “There’s still a chance,” I think. We are coming into terminal D and my next flight is all the way over in terminal A. Rats! Then the guy in front of me stops in the aisle to answer his cell phone while exiting the plane, and by now I am very upset and it is starting to show. I am visibly fidgeting and I know that my face is revealing my frustration with both the situation and the guy who is holding up all the anxious people behind him. I run like I am being chased through a jungle by a hungry tiger and I just miss my flight. And I do mean “just.” By probably two minutes. By now I am almost in full-fledged toddler-tantrum mode. The woman in line in front of me asks me a benign question and I give her a terse reply. I am very, very close to full-fledged meltdown. I feel my eyes get moist as I ask the gate agent for help. After getting a new boarding pass (for a flight that was just two hours later), I head to the women’s room to dry my tears and take a few deep breaths.

I suddenly get the irony of the time I spent this weekend teaching people about children’s challenging behavior, and then displaying quite a good dose of it myself. Where were those coping skills I supposedly had developed? I actually practice a lot of yoga and meditation, where the goal is calmness no matter the circumstances. I certainly had failed the airport test. As human’s we are tested when life does not meet our expectations. We can feel stress when we are not in control of our circumstances. It does not matter if you are four-years-old or, in my case, 41 years old. As adults, I told my audience, we are helping children build skills when we support them in their own behavior change. I think I am going to have to do a little extra work with my own inner child!

Inclusion is…understanding that behavior is a method of communication.